Addresses the credit crisis from the perspective of a Wall Street insider. Nice read if you are interested in understanding the goings-on in the financial industry - a world in which there is no fear of money, big numbers or extremely risky stuff . There's plenty of gossip to grab your attention.

Bright, witty guy - Satyajit Das. Puts me in the mind of Nassim Nicholas Taleb and the Black Swan. Enjoying it very much!

I found the attempts to make the material more exciting (for example, the "known unknowns, unknown unknowns," etc. a la Donald Rumsfeld) distracting, and initially difficult to get past.

But this book really explained a lot of what was going on in the world of derivatives, clearly and concisely (even has some simple diagrams to make it clearer).

Great book, once you get into it.

The most exciting part of this book is the title. Gets two stars for being informative.

Traders, Guns & Money is very fresh history, just two years old. Das picks apart the new machinery of the mega-trillion-dollar derivatives market, the one economists say might be next to collapse on our heads. And I'm with him, I really am. The guy has a thing for ridiculous puns and also for pitiable characters. We meet a couple of noodle makers who wreck their company on a deal that no one but Das seems to understand, but by the end of this book, you'll get the deal, too. - Laura Conaway

Some new information in here about trading that was from a direct, "hands-on" perspective that I was lacking. A quick read that's both informative and enjoyable.

Interesting Inside perspective

Gives a great inside of view of the financial crash of 2007. Gives an economic perspective of how financial markets work and adds quite a bit of humorous commentary to ease a complicated financial breakdown of the inside workings of the controllers of the nations money

All but a few financial storytellers fall short in comparison with Michael Lewis. Satyajit Dasis is no exception. Like the others who failed, he was not Lewis-like enough to carry the narrative. On the plus side, I give Das credit for his clear explanations of the many derivative products that are out there today. Let’s award points, too, for his title, even though the book couldn’t quite live up to the humor it was meant to project. As for the shortcomings, the worst, I thought, was the short shrift he gave to the more human elements. Lewis can get you involved with the people – smart or naïve, honest or corrupt, successful or beaten to a pulp. You want to know what happens to them in the unfolding story. Your understanding is helped by the fact that whole messy business has been personalized. With Das, it’s more just a laundry list of the financial products and recycled press accounts of famous meltdowns. Whenever he does involve people, they’re either fictitious stick figures or categories of investment subspecies lumped together a little too conveniently into bins of disrepute. I’m sure he has a point when he says many of today’s financial instruments can postpone tax bills, shift risks to less savvy clients, and obfuscate product deliverables, but in my mind he overplayed his cynicism and lost credibility in the process. Not all M&A activity is cannibalism, not all derivatives were created to dupe someone, and not all people in the industry are crooked. He weakens his case when he implies as much.

Overall this book wasn't too bad. Was probably a fairly accurate assessment of what it was like working on a sell-side trading floor, however things have changed somewhat as banks de-risk and shed some of their bad habits. I enjoyed reading about some of the various derivative structures that banks used to do, such as the inverse floater and the exotic currency stuff with the Japanese banks in the 1990s.

The downside to this book is that is has a lot of 'filler' topics that people who work in or follow the industry will already know and will get bored reading, such as the downfall of LTCM, drawn out explanations of how derivatives work, etc. At times felt like I was reading a Wikipedia page. The book can feel disjointed, like a hodgepodge of disparate topics that have been put together into a book about derivatives.

If I didn't work in the industry I wouldn't bother with this book, there are much more entertaining and informative books out there that talk about the dangers of derivatives and trading with leverage and problems they can cause without adequate regulation and risk management (The Big Short for example). However if you work on a trading floor or work with derivatives and other structured products, you will get something out of it, and might even really enjoy it.

Dense. Not a story but a series of vignettes. It is possible to understand but you have to put in the time.

This book does a good job of explaining a lot of the misunderstanding about derivatives and how they are used and abused. It is not a book that tries to teach you how you cna personally use them though.

This book is essentially a tale of the author's career within the world of derivatives. The book is also littered throughout with stories of real experiences that others have had with derivatives.

Three and a half. Pretty great.